2025/12/25 by Anna Kaczmarek, Kaczmarek-Wiśniewska, Anna
Arts and Humanities · #French Literature and Criticism #French Literature and Poetry #Literature and Culture Studies
paper · doi:10.34616/ajmp.2025.25.5
openalex publication_date 2025/12/25 · openalex created_date 2025/12/26 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/01
The paper employs the allegory of a musical scale to trace the evolution of Octave Mirbeau’s attitude towards Émile Zola between 1875 and 1888. Although skeptical about the principles of naturalism, Mirbeau was an admirer of both the work and the personality of the author of The Rougon-Macquart series, at the beginning. Later, he emerged as a harsh critic of both Zola’s character, whom he viewed as a betrayer of his own ideals, and his literary work, which he dismissed as being founded on erroneous principles. Throughout a decade, they did not maintain any contact to finally restore their relations due to Zola’s involvement in the Dreyfus affair.